Spare Parts - depressing Slovenian movie about people who smuggle immigrants into the country. They also like motorcycle racing at this track. One of them used to be a racer now he's a smuggler guy. Smuggling is a dirty business. This movie is realistic, gritty, well acted but isn't all that exciting. There aren't many women either. Those last two are sticking points for me but I liked it.

My daughter is getting increasingly interested in horror movies, and this afternoon she asked me what SILENT HILL was about. I told her it was better watched than explained, so she popped in the DVD and I watched part of it with her.

I know this movie caught a lot of grief because it didn't follow the video game it was based on very closely, but if you have never played the game, this is one heck of an atmospheric creep fest with a genuinely haunting ending! I challenge all the haters to watch it again, and pretend you never even knew there was a video game. I really like this movie!

A youthful Steve McQueen and his fellow teenage hot-rodders fight to save their town from a mass of man-eating space goop in this quaint '50s sci-fi/horror goodie. Fun for the whole family!

I forgot to mention that I watched this movie with my five year old (I figured it's fairly tame and not too scary for him), and he LOVED it. He spent the rest of the weekend running around the house with the big fluffy comforter from his bed over his head, screaming "AHHHH! The Blob's got me! Help!" I'm an awesome parent.

Harry Potter-esque fantasy/adventure in which a dorky American teenager living in England learns that he's the subject of an ancient prophecy (Seventh son of a seventh son!) and therefore is the only one who can save the world in an epic battle of Light Vs. Darkness.

Technically well made, with some nice special effects, but overall I found this one kinda dry. I've seen better, but I've seen far worse. A decent enough time waster.

WORLD ON A WIRE (1973): A computer programmer assigned to run a virtual reality world after his superior goes insane finds himself paranoid about whether he is actually part of the simulation. This two-part movie made for German TV by Rainer Werner Fassbinder runs three and a half hours; it's the ur-virtual reality movie, a lost science fiction classic with rigorous philosophical references and deep artistry. 4.5/5.

THE LAST OF ENGLAND (1988): An impressionistic portrait of decaying late-80s Britain by avant-garde filmmaker Derek Jarman, THE LAST OF ENGLAND is an obscure and highly personal mixture of poetry, music, overlapping dialogue, and ever-shifting, manipulated, distorted images. Poetic and highly impressive, but after ninety minutes of rambling beauty mixed with tedium, it reminds you why shorts are the preferred vehicle for abstract experimental films. 3.5/5.

Logged

"The basic plot is that Donna Speir and Hope Marie Carlton, the two undercover DEA agent Playboy Playmates from the last movie, are still running around in jungle shorts, cowboy boots and spaghetti strap T-shirts, firing their machine guns at drug smugglers, Filipino communist guerrillas, and corrupt federal agents while their two friends, Lisa London and Miss May 1984 Patty Duffek, lounge around the pool a lot and talk on speaker phones that look like fax machines."-Joe Bob on SAVAGE BEACH

"The basic plot is that Donna Speir and Hope Marie Carlton, the two undercover DEA agent Playboy Playmates from the last movie, are still running around in jungle shorts, cowboy boots and spaghetti strap T-shirts, firing their machine guns at drug smugglers, Filipino communist guerrillas, and corrupt federal agents while their two friends, Lisa London and Miss May 1984 Patty Duffek, lounge around the pool a lot and talk on speaker phones that look like fax machines."-Joe Bob on SAVAGE BEACH

SyFy Channel/The Asylum co-produced this "Walking Dead" wanna-be, with a team of scientists and military types attempting to get out of a zombie-infested San Francisco. The impressive cast includes LeVar "Geordi LaForge" Burton, Danny "Machete" Trejo and Mariel "Star 80" Hemingway....remember when these people had careers? Haha.

Anyway, there was lotsa mindless gory zombie blastin' action in this one but no story to speak of. I'm probably being kind by calling it "forgettable."

Over the last week or so, I've somehow managed to get in the following:

Carry On Screaming! (1966): Fun "Carry On" horror comedy parody has bungling detective Sergeant Sidney Bung (Harry H. Corbett) along with reluctant sidekick Constable Slobotham (Peter Butterworth) searching for a missing girl; her boyfriend Albert Potter (Jim Dale) joins in the search as well. The trail takes them to a mysterious manor named the Bide-A-Wee Rest Home where we meet up with a strange Addams Family-esque the Watt family including the voluptuous goth-girl Valeria (Fenella Fielding), her brother the zombified mad scientist Dr. Orlando Watt (Kenneth Williams), a Lurch-like butler named Sockett (Bernard Bresslaw) and unbeknownst to them, a monster named Oddball is also roaming about the place.

This was pretty fun stuff often considered a parody of the popular Hammer horror films, it actually feels more like a parody of the film House of Wax and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with a bit of the Addams Family thrown in for good measure. The funniest bits though involve Corbett's Sgt. Bung interacting with his domineering wife Emily (Joan Sims). Williams too is a hoot as Dr. Orlando Watt and Fenella Fielding makes a memorial ghoul girl. Another funny bit involves Constable Slobotham dressed in drag in a plan designed to trap the monster. Enjoyable especially if one's is in the mood for it, I'm giving this one ***1/2 out of ***** stars.

The Monster Squad (1987) : When Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, a mummy, a werewolf and a gill-man arrive in town, it's up to a group of kids in a monster club to stop them.

This is a cool film to revisit again and again. It's fun to see another take on the classic Universal monsters and almost all the classics are here in basically one form or another with most of the traditional film rules applying to them as well. There's a few flaws here and there but I like how powerful and villanous Dracula is in this one even if he does seem to have no problem with daylight in this film in a couple of scenes. The bits featuring Limbo come across as a tad bit confusing too although it's needed for the climax of the film. Also this film is surprisingly graphic especially during Rudy's battles with the monsters for what is in essence a kids film. Plus there's a number of fun comedy bits in this one, a memorable one involving the mummy, who isn't quite as formidable in this film it seems as the other monsters. ***1/2 out of ***** stars.

The Skull (1965): Dr. Christopher Maitland (Peter Cushing) agrees to purchase the the skull of the Marquis de Sade, reputed to be cursed, from a dealer named Marco (Patrick Wymark) who he suspects may have in fact stolen it. Maitland's friend, Sir Matthew Phillips (Christopher Lee), later confirms that this is so. The skull leads Maitland down a dark descent into madness, murder and mayhem.

This film is pretty cleverly done and actually manages to make a green glowing skull omnious and seemingly inherently evil. It helps with a cast like this, what with Cushing, Lee, Wymark and Jill Bennett as Jane Maitland. This one is teeming with great horror atmosphere and mystery. Definitely one of the best from Amicus, I'm giving this one ***1/2 out of ***** stars.

The Dunwich Horror (1970): Wilbur Whateley (Dean Stockwell), from a family with a reportedly sordid past, arrives in town and manages to use hypnotic influence in order to peruse the Necromonicon. Later he uses his influence to get the same girl Nancy Wagner (Sandra Dee), a college student from Arkham, Massachusetts to drive him back to his home town of Dunwich and then uses drugs and hypnosis to convince her to stay. We eventually learn he has plans for her for some special ceremony in honor of "The Old Ones". Eventually her college classmate Elizabeth Hamilton (Donna Baccala) and college professor Dr. Henry Armitage (Ed Begley) come searching for her only for Elizabeth to discover something truly horrific locked behind closed doors inside the Whately house.

This loose adaptation of Lovecraft has some cool moments here and there especially concerning the thing that's been locked up but overall feels much too arty to deliver any true horror scares. This artiness is probably there though to add padding to the film and to cover up its low budget. In many ways, the scenes featuring nudity and quasi-softcore porn also feel like extra padding to a rather simplistic plot featuring a battle between good (Dr. Armitage) and evil (Wilbur Whately). It has some moments but is overall disappointing and never quite delivers up to its promise. *** out of ***** stars.

Die, Monster, Die! (1965): A young man named Stephen Reinhart (Nick Adams) arrives at the Witley Mansion at the request of his fiancé's ailing mother Letitia (Freda Jackson) who's been stricken with some mysterious disease that seems to be deforming her, who wants Stephen to take her daughter/his fiancé Susan (Suzan Farmer) away from the Witley Mansion. However, Susan's wheelchair bound father, the creepy and seemingly obsessed with some mysterious purpose Nahum Witley (Boris Karloff) however objects to Reinhart's presence and intrusion in his dark domain. Many mysteries abound including mysterious cloaked figures lurking in the night, unearthly screams heard in the greenhouse and a sense of a presence of death walking the Witley grounds and within the Mansion itself.

This loose adaptation of Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space" has some good moments and some startling surprises. In essence, this film is more truly a science fiction film albeit one with many horrific elements. The budget never quite lets this one live up fully to its promise but there's definitely some memorable critters in the greenhouse and some memorial transformations of human characters as well. In some ways it disappoints because the explanation while unearthly isn't quite unearthly in the way one expects. Still I'm giving this one ***1/2 out of ***** stars.

The Howling (1981): While trying to get an exclusive scoop on and set a trap for a serial killer named Eddie (Robert Picardo), reporter Karen White (Dee Wallace) experiences something so traumatic she loses her memory of the event. Her therapist and fellow news celebrity Dr. George Waggner (Patrick Macnee) decides to send her and her husband Bill (Christopher Stone) to an exclusive country retreat named "The Colony" to encourage her recuperation although one local, a nymphomaniac named Marsha (Elisabeth Brooks) might prove something of a distraction for Bill. Meanwhile Karen's friends Terri Fisher (Belinda Balaski) and Chris Halloran (Dennis Dugan) continue to research and investigate the death of Eddie and the sudden disappearance of his body leading them to explore the world of werewolves eventually discovering a few unexpected connections between Eddie and other characters in the film.

This werewolf film is one of the best of its type. It plays more to actual werewolf folklore but also pays tribute to many classic Wolf Man and werewolf films thoughout, is loaded with cool in-references and is chock full of familiar faces including John Carradine, Slim Pickens, Kenneth Tobey and Dick Miller to name a few. This movie delivers some serious horror thrills yet also manages to be 80s fun and with the times. Recommended. **** out of ***** stars.

I'd never even heard of this film so when we came across it I had to check it out. Sean Connery's real brother was playing James Bond's brother....he was a lip-reading,hypnotizing plastic surgeon who was unwillingly roped into being a spy. ROFL! The dialog was dubbed over and not very well. At one scene a bunch of female spies jumped out of a bus dressed as Can-Can dancers to steal some sort of nuclear core thingy.....man! This made a James Bond movie seem completely believable. Ans I had to wonder just how did a plastic surgeon learn to fight?

Roger & Me (1989): Michael Moore's first documentary ever and it is on the impact and downfall of Flint, Michigan after GM closes down its factories. Watched it in my Sociology class and it's quite interesting overall. It's also quite sad to see how far one town fell once what happened them well was taken away from them. I give it a 4 out of 5. Also, don't see the point of the rabbit scene and showing it.

It's got a dual purpose: it's supposed to demonstrate what people are forced to do to survive given Flint's economy, and it's supposed to be a metaphor for the way GM treats their employees (pretending to care about them but actually seeing them as commodities). Moore did not have to show the killing onscreen but it has more impact he got a lot more mileage out of it that way.

Logged

"The basic plot is that Donna Speir and Hope Marie Carlton, the two undercover DEA agent Playboy Playmates from the last movie, are still running around in jungle shorts, cowboy boots and spaghetti strap T-shirts, firing their machine guns at drug smugglers, Filipino communist guerrillas, and corrupt federal agents while their two friends, Lisa London and Miss May 1984 Patty Duffek, lounge around the pool a lot and talk on speaker phones that look like fax machines."-Joe Bob on SAVAGE BEACH

Really good, taut little film, reminded me of Universal product, although it was made by Columbia.

Logged

If it's true what they say, that GOD created us in His image, then why should we not love creating, and why should we not continue to do so, as carefully and ethically as we can, on whatever scale we're capable of?

The choice is simple; refuse to create, and refuse to grow, or build, with care and love.

Last night, for Halloween, my daughters and I rented a new video release, THE COLOUR OUT OF SPACE. This is a German adaptation of the classic Lovecraft story by the same title, and to its credit, it did attempt to follow the storyline of the original pretty closely, other than transferring the story from the wilds of Massachusetts to the German Black Forest. Unfortunately, the story does move along pretty slowly at first. It does build some decent tension and in the end is pretty fascinating, as long as you are not expecting fast-paced action or a gory splatter fest.